Blazing Along

We come to the Blaze gene. The Blaze gene, Bl, is incompletely dominant, and is common in the Simmental breed.

BlBl animals generally have a large blaze to a white face. Unlike the Sh pattern, they won't have the other associated white areas. BlBl animals with the ss trait for recessive spotting can look a lot like Sh animals.

Blbl animals have less white, usually a blaze, or even as small as a star or a snip.

Here are 2 Blbl animals. As you can see, the black has a full blaze, and the red only has a star and a snip.

Another thing to remember, is that the ss (recessive spots) gene can give very similar results to the Blbl or BlBl.

Here is a calf that very much looks like BlBl or Blbl. However, as both her parents were solid colored, one can presume that they were both Ss blbl in genetic makeup. They both passed on the s gene, to make her ss blbll

Another calf, his parents were ss blbl and Ss blbl. He ended up ss blbl.

This heifer calf is out of 2 Ss blbl parents. Again both parents passed on the s gene, to make the calf ss blbl. This time the calf has only a small amount of white on the head